When I Dream of Christian Unity

Everybody, well almost, says they want Christian unity. It’s one of those Sunday School answers. It’s like saying, “Everybody who loves Jesus raise your hand” in a Sunday School class.

But when you raise your hand for Christian unity, what do you mean? What is your vision?

I’ve been thinking of this as I hear various people talk, and asking myself what I would hope for. We can easily be just as disunited about unity as we are about anything else!

It seems to me that there are several possible aspects of unity, and not all of them necessarily work together.

• Unity of spirit, i.e., we tend to respond in similar ways to similar issues. We may have somewhat different viewpoints, but we get along. Actual unified beliefs may be clearly defined, or they may just be a general set of feelings.
• Unity of doctrine, where we all accept the same statement of beliefs.
• Unity of organization, in which we all fall under one umbrella.

I’m sure I could come up with more if I spent time. I might also distinguish any sort of unity as inward or outward looking. Inward looking unity unites us (as we define us) against them, while outward looking unity unites us because we can thus better serve both us and them. These are kind of polar opposites, and most actual cases would fall variously between.

When talking about Christian unity, however, we also have to consider what it is we are uniting. This might fall under unity of doctrine, but it could also be classified as unity of culture. We can end up calling for unity of all conservative evangelicals, just plain evangelicals, liberals/progressives, charismatics, pentecostals, etc., because in our minds that is what “Christian” is. I’ve encountered people who sought the unity of everyone who believes in Jesus. After all, believing in Jesus, they tell me, is all that matters. But when you drill down, they mean very specific things by “believing in Jesus,” such as believing in Jesus in the sense of penal substitutionary atonement.

I say all this to suggest that we do need to think, and hopefully think clearly, about what we mean when we call for unity.

I like the use of metaphors in discussing this, and two metaphors came to my mind as I thought about writing this post. First, dancing. You might think of a dance school or even a dance conference or gathering of some sort. The way I see this is that there are a myriad of things that are called dance, and one person might even think what someone else does isn’t really dancing. At a school or a large gathering, you will likely have a variety of styles, from individual displays to large groups. You’ll find different styles of choreography. Everybody dances, as they see it. There’s a structure and an organization, but the boundaries are blurred as some creative people break the rules. As long as nobody gets violent, everyone can have fun.

Second, I see a river. The river has tributaries, currents, eddies, changes of channel over time, turns, blockages, and may even, as it arrives at the sea, divide into a river delta. A water molecule may take many different roads along the river path, but in general, the water gets to the sea.

These two metaphors speak two me of common purpose and destination, with intervening differences. They also save me, I think, from going to far in defining someone else’s unity. (I want you to feel the internal contraction is assigning ownership of unity to a person, of a unity of different unities.) You can be a middle of the river water molecule or one who tries all the currents and eddies or spends time in quiet pools near the shore as the river meanders along. You can be in the contests for the traditional dances, or out playing with styles that are seeking recognition. You might get dipped out of the river and used for someone’s shower or bath, or even to flush a toilet before you get back to the river. Gotta love mixing those metaphors, or at least stirring them.

What is your vision of unity?